STUDY SEEKS CHANGES IN TIJUANA TOURIST AREA, FOCUS ON LOCALS

TIJUANA 
As a sharp drop in U.S. visitors has led to shuttered shops in Tijuana’s traditional Avenida Revolución tourist district, a new study suggests relaunching the area — but this time with the city’s own residents in mind.

An upcoming report by the Urban Land Institute of San Diego-Tijuana envisions the area’s future as a neighborhood with parks, offices, shops and higher-density housing.

“You want to get people out into the street, and you want those people to be living there and to be tourists there,” said Greg Shannon, a San Diego development consultant who led a panel of experts that studied ways that the area could be redeveloped and revitalized. “If you really want to attract tourists, make it a great place for your residents,” said Shannon, whose portfolio includes the San Diego Ballpark District.

The nonprofit institute’s local chapter has in the past sent teams of volunteer specialists to Chula Vista, National City, El Cajon and the Port of San Diego, but this was the group’s first venture across the border.

The Tijuana panel was set up at the petition of Tijuana’s Economic Development Council and a group of downtown Tijuana property owners, which shared the cost of the $25,000 study with Tijuana’s municipal government. The payment is used to help support the institute.

The panel’s recommendations were presented this month at the national Urban Land Institute’s spring meeting, held this year in San Diego, but the written report is not expected until early June.

“The most important thing is that it’s doable,” Pedro Sánchez González, vice president of the downtown Tijuana property owners group, said of the study. “We want to break the cycle of depending on one sector,” said Sánchez, member of a family with roots in the region that date back five generations.

Sánchez said businesses and property owners in the district have suffered from the shifting demands of U.S. tourists for a range of items, from alcohol to artifacts to perfumes, which during past decades brought both booms and busts.

The most recent decline in visitors came after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when tighter U.S. security measures at the border crossings led to a new passport requirements and longer lines to get back into the United States.

Economic recession and reports of drug violence, which peaked in 2008, also drove down tourism, and while conditions have improved, traditional tourism has not returned to its earlier levels.

The ULI study, called a Revitalization Concept Plan, looks at an area about three blocks wide and nine blocks long, about 42 acres, that straddles Avenida Revolución.

The area is bounded by Avenida Constitución and Avenida Negrete, from Ninth Street to Calle Coahuila near the U.S. border.

The experts found many challenges to developing the area: few open spaces, little landscaping, lack of parking, streets and infrastructure in disrepair, few cultural institutions to bring in residents and tourists, as well as difficulties with long-term planning under municipal administrations that only last three years.